Recent Articles

Friend of TAP Dayo Olopade has a fantastic series (Read part one , two , and three ) over at The Root on black women and political power in the United States. Olopade writes, "The real obstacles to elective office may be about less rights and more about belonging to the right club." Well, part of that is on us to install the standard bearers of black female political power into our cannon. Here are three women whose voices you should know: "All this was on account of we want to register. To become first class citizens. ... Is this America? The land of the free and the home of the brave? Where we have to sleep with our telephones off the hook because our lives be threatened daily, because we want to live as decent human beings, in America." Fannie Lou Hamer, a civil-rights activist, addressing the 1964 Democratic National Committee as the vice chair of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. The MFDP was seeking to be seated as a challenge to the all-white Mississippi Democratic...

Courtney Martin writes that this International Women's Day, we should look at gender inequality in our own communities. Each day this week on TAPPED we will run a profile of an organization doing exactly that. It seems that everywhere you look these days someone is speaking publicly about the urgent, international issue of sexual trafficking. New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof goes undercover in foreign brothels. HBO creates whole miniseries out of the devastation and drama, replete with Eastern European thugs. Heck, even Ashton Kutcher twitters against it. But how often do you hear about domestic sex trafficking? Rarely, if ever. Rachel Lloyd, founder of Girls Educational & Mentoring Services (GEMS), is trying to change that. Lloyd, a victim of sexual exploitation during her own teenage years, founded GEMS in 1999. Born in the UK, Lloyd came to the U.S. in 1997 to work with adult women voluntarily leaving prostitution. After just a couple of years of working with women on...

D.C. started accepting same-sex marriage license applications today. Candy Holmes and Darlene Garner were the sixth couple in line. Read DCists' account of the morning , and check out Adam Serwer's reporting on the fight to legalize same-sex marriage in the District. (Special thanks to Matt Dunn for the photo.)

Nah, just kidding. We haven't become Lapham's Quarterly just yet. But given the slow news cycle brought about by the whiteout of D.C., we thought we'd offer up some gems from the Prospect archives for your snow-day reading enjoyment: Organizers of the first international art show in Vietnam since 1962 expected their country's new openness to Western business would mean more cultural freedom. Were they ever wrong. Unfortunately, the slogan "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas" seems to apply to union successes as well. Wonder if these newbie members of Congress are enjoying the worst D.C. winter on record. And, Dems, while you're stuck inside plotting this year's political strategy, don't forget that throwing "special interests" under the bus does nothing but hurt you. --The Editors (Flickr/ MV Jantzen )

Today in 1867, Congress overrode President Andrew Johnson's veto of a bill granting voting rights to male citizens of the nation's capital. It marked the first time African American men were granted the right to vote. However, to this day, D.C. still lacks voting representation in Congress. (Flickr/ M.V. Jantzen )